In view of current environmental pollution problems, particularly in the area of water quality, it is becoming increasingly important to establish techniques for cleansing contaminated water of undesirable contaminants. Contamination of water with oxidizable organic compounds is of particular importance. Some particularly important organic contaminants are alcohols or organic acids. Many of these contaminants have proven difficult to remove, particularly low molecular weight organics at very low concentrations.
This problem exists both in large urban water supplies and in other smaller water supplies such as those found in space vehicles and submarines. These smaller water supplies offer an additional challenge to any purification device in that the size and efficiency of the purification device must be small enough and energy efficient enough so that it is compatible with the limited space and energy resources associated with these environments.
Therefore, what is needed in this art is a method of removing organic compounds from aqueous solutions which minimizes weight, volume and power requirements using an efficient and compact process.